Topic · 7 posts

Linux

Lançamento do Plasma 6.8 marca aniversário de 30 anos do KDE

KDE’s 30 years anniversary is today (14th), with the release of Plasma 6.8 as part of celebrations.

Of all the desktop environments for Linux, Plasma is what I like the most. I hope to one day use it on a “daily driver” computer.

Curiosity: the email from Matthias Ettrich announcing the “Kool Desktop Environment” in 1996. “So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.”

Gnome 51 “A Coruña”

This Wednesday (16th), the stable version of Gnome 51, the famous desktop environment for Linux, was released. (Announcement video.) The highlight is improvements in performance and graphics. I don’t know if it was already there, but I’m glad to see that Sushi is a default app and was ported to GTK4. It displays file content by pressing the Space key in the file manager — similar to the quick Look of macOS.

Unfortunately the new overlay of the search results, which was expected to land in Gnome 51, didn’t make the cut.

Asahi Linux on M3 chips

The Asahi Project, whose mission is to make Linux distributions viable on post-2020 Apple computers, announced on Sunday 6th support for the Apple Silicon M3 chip family. There are still important limitations, such as the lack of 3D acceleration and the inability to put the system to sleep, but it works. Because of these, support is hidden behind “expert mode.”

Man built an exclusionary pseudo Linux distro instead of going to therapy

I avoid giving stage time to weird people (in the bad sense) here at the Manual. I’m making an exception to link to a July post by DHH, the Danish co-founder of 37Signals (the company behind Basecamp), creator of Omarchy, and author of a blog full of wrong ideas about immigrants and non-white people.

He became the “men do [stupid and/or difficult thing] instead of therapy” meme. I mean, literally. This man built an exclusionary pseudo Linux distro instead of going to therapy. And he’s proud of it! It’s right there on his blog:

Something many people will encounter at some point in their lives. Studies have shown that exercise, for example, is a more effective treatment than talk therapy (and pharmaceuticals!) when dealing with such episodes. But I’m just as interested in the role building competence can have in warding off the demons.

And partly because of this meme.

I’ve talked about it before, but I keep coming back to the fact that it’s exactly backwards. That signing up for an educational quest into Linux, history, or motorcycle repair actually is an incredibly effective alternative to therapy

Congrats on the discovery, DHH, keep it up. Clearly it’s working.

DHH is back in the spotlight after raising USD 12 million from other tech bigwigs for a somewhat shady foundation built around Omarchy, which sparked backlash from employees and customers of the companies involved, like 1Password.

Another week on Linux

Sometimes I get bitten by the free software bug. I’ve followed the consumer tech industry for decades, and immersed in that universe, it’s hard not to grow disillusioned with its monopolies, questionable practices, and normalized abuses. Although disdain for big tech is more fashionable these days, we’re far from any universal, practical shift because — let’s face it — that shift comes at a cost. Try convincing someone to swap WhatsApp for Signal, for instance.

In late July, my free software fever reached dangerous temperatures. Once again, I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden; I thought I was standing at the door of a digital utopia, something like the modern-day dream of dropping everything to go live off the land.

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Gnome Shell Design Dreams 
blogs.gnome.org

The Gnome Shell user interface has mostly seen minor refinements and quality of life updates in recent cycles, but on the design side we’ve explored a lot of longer-term things we’d like to do. Some of these we have relatively complete plans for, others are more vague ideas that need more research and prototyping. As always, getting things like these implemented depends on developer capacity and interest (and sometimes funding).

I like the ideas. None of them represents a major break from the current interface; several bring Gnome in line with the experience that’s expected and common in other desktop environments and operating systems.

The most advanced one, which should appear in the next version (Gnome 51), is the overlay showing search results (image), instead of these appearing on their own dedicated/full screen. The change is justified in light of the philosophy adopted in Gnome 40: “When you navigate GNOME Shell, interface elements always come from somewhere, and exit to somewhere else, in a way that’s semantic and predictable over time.”

End of 10: Replace Windows 10 with a Linux distro 

Support for Windows 10 will end on October 14th, 2025, just a few months away. A group involved with Linux distros has launched the website End of 10 to assist those who want to switch from Windows to Linux, instead of following Microsoft’s guidance to discard a functional computer and buy a new one with Windows 11. End of 10 gathers instructions and information about locations and events where volunteers install a Linux distro on computers for those who are not familiar with the process.

End of 10
Switch from Windows 10 to Linux